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A rousing history of the penalty kick and its introduction in English football by a famed British writer & editor.
In the 1880s, football was a rough and often dangerous game. As a result, William McCrum, the heir to a linen fortune and a keen amateur goalkeeper in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, proposed a new and drastic sanction: a penalty kick that would admonish anyone—and their team—for not following the rules.
At first the International Football Board resisted “the Irishman's Motion” as a restriction that would curb the players' freedom of expression, but the Penalty Kick was adopted in 1891 to almost immediate acclaim among fans and players. For about a hundred years, this extraordinary phenomenon has not only regulated the conduct of football, but has also inspired game theorists and infiltrated classics of contemporary literature.
An enthralling portrait of a lost age, “The Penalty Kick: The Story of a Game-Changer” looks at the history and meaning of an extraordinary phenomenon while examining the Penalty Kick's psychological—even philosophical—grip on our imaginations, with its distillation of risk and chance into an all-or-nothing moment.
In the 1880s, football was a rough and often dangerous game. As a result, William McCrum, the heir to a linen fortune and a keen amateur goalkeeper in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, proposed a new and drastic sanction: a penalty kick that would admonish anyone—and their team—for not following the rules.
At first the International Football Board resisted “the Irishman's Motion” as a restriction that would curb the players' freedom of expression, but the Penalty Kick was adopted in 1891 to almost immediate acclaim among fans and players. For about a hundred years, this extraordinary phenomenon has not only regulated the conduct of football, but has also inspired game theorists and infiltrated classics of contemporary literature.
An enthralling portrait of a lost age, “The Penalty Kick: The Story of a Game-Changer” looks at the history and meaning of an extraordinary phenomenon while examining the Penalty Kick's psychological—even philosophical—grip on our imaginations, with its distillation of risk and chance into an all-or-nothing moment.